Fate/EXTRA Last Encore – 04

One more indication that Fate/EXTRA Last Encore expects its viewers to have played the game, or at least have some greater knowledge of the Fate/ franchise: the Command Seals. This week Hakuno burns one of them and makes Saber cook-off like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and then no mention is made the feat again for the rest of the episode. While this is one of those motifs that veterans of the franchise will be used to, there’s no recourse for newcomers to Fate/ except to wonder which orifice they pulled their super-move out of. To explain in brief: the Command Seals are basically a limited number of get-out-of-gaol-free cards that all Masters have access to, which can be cashed to power up their Servant temporarily. As a narrative device, I suspect they were originally designed so that Masters don’t feel completely out of place in the clash of titans that is the Servant vs Servant match-ups. Honestly, Hakuno, being mostly a normal-high-school-student-protagonist, still feels out of placem but this would have been less noticeable in a visual novel. It’s much easier to ‘hide’ the protagonist when we’re just dealing with first-person text, but in an anime, where an entire scene has to be blocked visually, Hakuno has little to do except run around and be a liability. Since he only has those three Command Seals, he’s a very limited character from the get-go, so mostly he can only once in a while pretend to be impactful, fail to do so, then need justify his existence at some other point. In the videogames, it’s quite clear; you were playing as the Servant. The Master was an afterthought.

Back to the original point, the other indication that Last Encore wants us to have to have played the game first is that without doing so we won’t appreciate the differences between it and the anime, and those differences are becoming increasingly significant. Last week I talked about Shinji’s characterisation and how it differed between the game and the anime, about how putting the two versions together gave a complete picture. I suspect that will be the case for this stratum’s boss as well. I won’t go into it in detail for now so as to avoid spoilers, but I will say, though, that here he behaves in ways that are arguably contrary to his characterisation in the videogame. The dissonance is great enough that I believe it to be a deliberate juxtaposition. Perhaps the game and anime are deliberately starkly different continuities. Perhaps there has been some change in motivation. More on this next week.

As for this week, the overall narrative is starting to take a clear shape, somewhat faster than it did in the videogame. For this we have to thank Rani XIII, who takes a break from the universal hobby of Last Encore — pose and monologue — to be our Person Who Explains Stuff. That’s a fantasy stock staple, much as Rin served previously, and if we were to have one of these every stratum the cast is going to get cluttered very quickly. Thankfully Rin has disappeared with great timing to do enigmatic, offscreen things, so we can focus on the exposition instead. I hope the nature of the setting of Fate/EXTRA, its particular digital world and its particular Holy Grail War, are starting to click now. This was supposed to be more than a quest for a religious artefact, or a contest with a wish as the prize. Fate/EXTRA wants to go one further, to be an obvious metaphor for humanity’s search for utopia. But traditionally, the quest for the Holy Grail and the quest for utopia are both defined by their failures. And so the question for Last Encore: will be a story about how far we get, or about how far we fall short?

Game and anime isn’t starkly different continuities. My guess that this is the sequel to Extra’s storyline and the set up for Extella’s storyline has just likely been confirmed during this episode.

Really do not read this if you don’t want some spoilers from Extra storyline and some of Extella.Show Spoiler ▼

The date being 3020, just 10 years shy of 1000 from the Extra’s setting of 2030(s) instantly has nailed this as a sequel to the entire Extra storyline. The reason why everyone is acting the way they do is because Extra’s storyline has already taken place. Everyone’s still alive due to the SE.RA.PH. itself. Human life on earth is totally destroyed (as told in Extella) and therefore everyone now resides in Moon Cell to live. Also the people who have died before have seem to have been granted a second chance at life. If you got a second chance, wouldn’t you try doing things you didn’t normally do?

Like say Shinji not being a whiny jerk, but using his gamer status to make everyone’s life better? Not having to kill any of his fellow masters, like he did the first time around and didn’t know they truly died.

Dan Blackmore wanted a fair fight with Hakuno, but as he dies he realized he just wanted to have one last great battle with Archer helping him. Hey, guess what he’s doing with his life this time around? Doing exactly what he wanted with a second chance.

I’m betting that we’re going to see those exact changes happening to each possible master that shows up. I wouldn’t be surprised if Caster is the one who instead of trying to erase Hakuno’s memory tries installing it back into him. To show her own growth.

Hakuno’s hatred comes from the fact that he was supposed to be kitten and rainbows after everything was done. This entire scenario is not what he wanted and he knows that the only solution for him now is to go back to the top. Does he know how to solve it? No. He just knows the drill (even if he can’t remember it) and he needs to deal with it.

Wouldn’t be surprised if some plot points that start creeping in at some point about Velber.
Assuming that this is in fact a prequel to Extella. Though I’m not sure about that part, I do think there is some confirmation due to Caster of Hakuno showing up on a sticker, meaning that she has existed in the world. That would be too cruel of a throw away “line” for such an important character.

Needless to say, I’m thinking episode 6 will probably drop all the bombs for either my theory to be correct or dump it all to shreds.

It doesn’t feel that way at all honestly. The story of Extella’s backstory for Extra is also greatly different and says a number of things happened the way they did originally on Nasu’s Blog. Earth was still habitable in Extella but humanity as a whole were stagnating and self-destructing as CCC materials mention. The Moon Cell at the end of Extella was a gateway for a new possibility for the stagnated humanity and so people headed there to live.

Nasu’s Blog mentions Medea’s master from FSN she killed was an enemy master Hakuno fought and had Tamamo as his servant. There’s also the fact half-collapsed Archer waa the servant of female Hakuno who lacked a soul as male Hakuno’s clone. The two defeat Galahad and Leo and were their last opponent before male Hakuno and Saber could confront Twice and Saver.

If I’m right about it being a sequel to the Extra storyline, it also makes sense why the seal was used. If you recall, nearly everyone keeps mentioning that Hakuno about his memory. Does he really not remember?

Also TheVoid, don’t forget that Extra and CCC were running both parallel to each other. When I say Extra’s storyline, I mean both Extra and CCC’s. So I’m sorry if you are assuming that I was talking about Extra’s alone. In fact, I find that CCC’s probably actually telling the truth about how the world is outside rather than Extra’s.

I didn’t mean to say that Earth wasn’t inhabitable and I apologize if I may have said that. I was meaning those exact reasons you mentioned that the world wasn’t in a good place. But as you say SE.RA.PH. is how the world starts progressing yet again. So that’s what this story is. That never actually gets resolved in Extra or CCC. And considering who our villain(s) was in the Extra and CCC, this makes sense that this does need to get resolved in Last Encore.

In Extella Tamamo and Nero get into a fight about what happens at the end of Hakuno’s quest.
That both of them helped Hakuno get to the end of it, but Saber tosses Tamamo off the platform in an attempt to steal Hakuno all to herself. There’s no place that fits into the story, right?
Extra ends with only one, same as CCC.

However, we don’t know how Last Encore is going to end, do we? We also don’t know how Extra or CCC ended. Now, you may say “no, we do know how the games ended” and I guess I should correct that. We don’t know who was Hakuno’s servant for each game. Most likely Nero for Extra, Tamamo for CCC is probably the correct answer there.

As for Nasu’s blog, I couldn’t say one way or another that it is what it is. I can’t read the blog. I’m English only. However, just because something is written on your blog doesn’t necessarily mean that’s how things stay the same. In fact, if I was writing, I never put things down in stone until they are actually on the stone. Meaning that while we can probably look to Nasu’s blog for advice, things or plans changed drastically.

Also, who’s to say that Fakuno(female Hakuno) doesn’t show up later in the show? I’ve always assumed that the basis of the beginning of Episode 1 was actually Fakuno using the powers that Hakuno shows in Extella. Fakuno would transfer her mind over to Hakuno and what’s playing out now is actually different.

However, if we have to make what’s in the blog work, then that opening to episode 1 is actually a flash forward. Fakuno is in fact alive and was created by Twice probably because of Twice’s original defeat in Extra and also because of Kiara. Why exactly did a person who isn’t a person become this way? Why not just re-create the original case and see what happens?

Oh hey, that explains why the failed summoning of Nameless happened and why Nameless is trying to kill Hakuno. Fakuno wanted him dead, but failed. However, just like Rani and Rin, I wouldn’t be surprised if Fakuno ended up the same. Having the two meet would also cause Hakuno to hate everything even more, because frankly, the world tried replacing him.

Fakuno could explain why Nero’s so unlike herself at the end of the OP. Nero failed Hakuno. Sure it wasn’t her love who died, but this is Nero. Even if it isn’t Hakuno, Fakuno to her would still be treated as dearly as her beloved Maestro. Could you imagine the amount of agony knowing that there’s not a damn thing she can do to save Fakuno? What if her true Maestro became like that? That’s the Saber we’re probably going to see later.

BTW, none of what I’m saying though puts any dents into the fact that this could also be a master related to the 2nd Season of Grand Order. In fact, I wouldn’t doubt it is because of one of those people that this is happening the way it is. Grand Order seems to tie into nearly every media of Fate/ now so I wouldn’t be surprised if it did.

Way longer than I intended, I’m just tossing everything into spoiler tags to make sure I didn’t miss something.

Female Hakuno wasn’t made by Twice in the Extella backstory. She was a glitch. What she wanted was to live, which was impossible by default because she is soulless and male Haluno has the soul. Her fight alongside Archer was to show their conviction to fight to the end, the Archer who shows up at the beginning of the show is something else. Atram (Medeas former master in FSn/ Tamamos former master in Extella) tried to cheat they system and it ended with Tamamo surviving as a result. Humanity stagnation was something humanity itself as a whole wanted as CCC materials confirmed, with BB controlled by the Moon Cell voting on exterminating mankind with mankind as a whole voting for its extintction. which is why Twice sought conflict to spur mankind forward. This is why Female Hakuno being shown with Nero as her servant is an outlier. Things are too fundamentally different that it can’t be connected to Extella or the original since the story says they failed because Buddha is too OP.

Roman’s took baths every day in large baths a very social interaction setting. Originally sex-segregated, mixed bathing did occur later and a Emperor did what they wanted. So not showing Nero taking a long bath in a big room over and over and wanting to chat while doing it would not be in character.

Yes it’s very virtual reality esque as the Moon Cell was made by aliens before the earth or moon even existed/put there after the aliens kicked Type-Moons butt. I don’t remember which.

The virtual space seen works like the Third Magic and humans whose souls normally degrade with time are functionally immortal unless they get killed. The resistance thing is likely only due to Rin and Rani becoming allies as Hakuno does a thing in game with them. Unless CCC characters start showing up.

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